A house divided against itself cannot stand. And Marxists understand that so they want to foment division to weaken the society in order for it to fall so that they can come in and begin to take over.
As Christians, our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of cremation and today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Joining us on this podcast is to rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Well, hello again, and welcome to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance, I'm Scott Allen, and I'm here today with team members John Bottimore and Luke Allen. And we are going to discuss today, a documentary that was released in recent weeks here called "Uncle Tom II." It was put out by Salem Media, a really terrific documentary that is looking at the experience of the African American community from the vantage point of African Americans, of black Americans, and particularly trying to understand what's happening right now in the community and in the nation as a whole. Particularly around from the vantage point of what's going on with the riots of what year was that, guys, 2020 and 21, and the Black Lives Matter movement, and just all the changes that we're seeing in culture, the increased tension between races, the critical race theory ideology, and the rise of the language of white supremacy and whiteness, and these kinds of things. And so really, really helpful documentary. I think, it's fair to say guys, wouldn't you say it's by you buy African Americans for African Americans? But for everyone, but it's really trying to understand these changes in the culture through that particular lens. So anyways, guys, we watched it, and we would love to just share our thoughts and reactions to it, I think it's got a really important message for us as Christians in the culture at this time, and we want to just touch on what that main message is, why it's important, how we respond to it. So I think I'd like to just open it up to John, to you and to you, Luke, and just hear some of your initial reactions to the documentary "Uncle Tom II".
Yeah, thank you, Scott, I'll start here. Here in the DNA, we don't just look at behaviors and respond to behaviors, we try to understand what might be driving those behaviors in terms of the values and even below the values or earlier in the heart of human beings—before the values come, the worldviews and such. And I thought, this documentary did a great job at really looking at what we can call the origins, the origins of thinking, the origins that then lead to changes in society and changes in behaviors, and that sort of thing. And so just very briefly, to kick off, I thought it did a great job in doing that. And it really looked at the origin of coming out of slavery. I mean, we should all say first and maybe foremost here that we're not in any way saying that slavery isn't a horrible smear in America's history. It absolutely is. And it absolutely has effects that we can continue to talk about and learn from today. But fundamentally, the documentary got into coming out of slavery and how important Christianity was and the situation at the turn of the century, meaning going from the 1800s and the 1900s. And how all of that was attacked by the thinking of the day and ultimately had an effect on family, ultimately had effect on morality, ultimately had effect on the things that we now can say are behavioral oriented types of things. So digging into that I think in this discussion will be really helpful to see how we got from there to here and how we might recover the understanding of faith start in the black community in Americas as well as our own origins from 1776 forward.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And Dad, you said this was written by black Americans for black Americans, I would definitely agree with that. But I think anyone should watch this film. Because like, John was just saying, a lot of this talks about culture, and how culture has been affected and influenced, especially in the last 150 years plus. A lot of this was about discipleship at the level of culture. Which is exactly what the DNA talks about all the time. And this is happening here in the US. But as the documentary points out, this has happened all over the world. Since our recent emphasis on the denial of God, God is dead, you know? So what's going to take its place? And how are we going to fill that in culture? So take that idea, and disciple a culture with it. And now we're seeing the ramifications and the consequences of that. And a lot of those consequences happened to be really, really strongly affecting black America currently. But there's way more here than, you know, race relations and racism in America. So I would recommend it for anyone in the US or global audience.
I'd like to talk about... yeah, I thought, John, back to your point, it did a great job of focusing on ideas, and how ideas have consequences, as we talked about on this podcast. And specifically, it goes back to the ideas that were percolating in Europe and in the middle part of the 1800s. And it focuses in on the ideas of Karl Marx in particular, and how those ideas have continued to have ripple effects in significant ways, all the way up to the present time. And it taught me the connection between what's happening in the African American community today and Karl Marx, through Black Lives Matter. The three founders of Black Lives Matter, the young founders have been very open about how they are heavily influenced by Marxist thinking. And so I think one of the people in the documentary, I can't remember exactly who at this point, they were saying, what is Marx? What does Marxism have to do with the African American community? It doesn't seem like a very logical connection to make. But the documentary basically tells the story of what that connection is, and why that connection was made.
And it might be good guys, just to talk with our audience a little bit about that, at least what we learned, I feel like I learned some significant things, I thought it was very helpful. But just to go back to the mid 1800s, and specifically, you know, this was an ideological milieu that included people significantly like Marx, and Charles Darwin, and also Sigmund Freud, all of them were atheists. And all of them were kind of imagining or dreaming of a world without God. They were drivers of secularism, and deeply anti-God, particularly, Marx himself.
And I just like to touch a little bit on Marx's thinking. I've had to go back and refresh my own thinking on Marx's ideas, because I think personally, I kind of discredited them for a good part of my adult life, because I thought that those ideas have gone out of vogue so to speak, that they have lost their influence in the culture. And it wasn't until maybe about 5-10 years ago that I realized I was really wrong, that they had been percolating, still kind of under the substrate of the culture in a significant way, and even a way that was growing and its influence and in its momentum. And now, it's kind of surfaced in this time of COVID. And through organizations like Black Lives Matter, it's surfaced. And it's kind of creating cultural earthquakes right now.
So I thought it might be good just to go back and just kind of review our own thinking on just Marx and Marxist ideas because of the power and the influence that they've had. Marx, of course, in a milieu himself, he was a German, but spent most of his life in London working at the London School of Economics. But his influences were, I think, particularly a guy named Feuerbach. Ludwig Feuerbach, I believe his name is, who is kind of the father of modern atheism. Feuerbach famously said that religion is a wish fulfilling fantasy, there is no God. And people create this idea of God in order to meet deep personal needs that they have, but there is no God. So, Freud was very much influenced by him, he was very influenced by another philosopher named Hegel. Hegel was kind of most famous for his idea of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. And a thesis, an idea, has to be countered by an antithesis, an opposite idea. And there has to be kind of a conflict between these ideas that brings about a synthesis, something new. And all of that led him to kind of take a an approach that there needed to be kind of a head on conflict, that kind of almost a revolutionary approach in order to overturn the older idea, that thesis with the antithesis leading to the synthesis.
So anyways, I think the two things, Marx was an atheist, very strongly atheistic. And he's also a reductionist, he boiled down everything to economics. Economics kind of was the lens through which you could understand everything else, who you were, and what was wrong with the world. And so for him, the problem with the world was capitalism, which he saw as a deeply oppressive and alienating system. Again, he was writing at the time of Charles Dickens as the Christmas Carol and child factory labor systems and a lot of exploitation of workers. And so I think there is a part of this that we can understand and appreciate in some ways. But for Marx, he wanted to overthrow this capitalist system, he wanted to create a new system, where everything would be shared equally. And he kind of foresaw this kind of Utopian world where everyone—there would be no private property, there would be no capitalism, everyone would share everything equally.
And some people have likened his vision, this kind of utopian vision of Marx to the kingdom of God, kind of the future kingdom of God, after Jesus returns without God himself, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. Part of the way that Marx makes sense to me is the fact that he borrows so many Christian ideas. But then he wants to eliminate God. So he wants to replace God with the state or manmade systems and structures in order to get to this kind of utopian vision that he has.
So what the documentary does, guys is it, it basically traces Marxism and its influence in the world starting first of all, after World War One in Russia with the Bolshevik Revolution. And the the leaders of that revolution, Lenin and Stalin, and those folks really did see these ideas of Marxism spreading around the world and being victorious. They believe that they would get their foothold in Russia spread to Asia, to China, and eventually take over the United States. And the whole world would come under the sway of this, this kind of Marxist revolution. It didn't pan out that way. It didn't ever really take root in the United States. And, you know, that was a puzzle, I think, for these guys. And I think their response to it—and then those that followed Marx, people like Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School social theorists—their analysis of why it never took root in the United States, I think was correct. And that was that, you know, capitalism, if you will, or the economic system of the United States rests on a substructure. This is a Marxist word, a substructure that's largely Christian, it's largely Judeo Christian. And it believes in hard work and freedom and has certain kind of values associated with it. That unless those were changed, unless those values and principles in the culture were changed, Marxism was never going to be able to take a foothold in the United States. And so they began and this would be in the, now we're talking about the mid 1900s. And they would be these Marxist theorists who were trying to kind of redo Marx's theory in order to help it to take root in the United States and in the West more broadly. They set up a kind of a plan to infiltrate the culture, to influence the culture, they knew that they could never succeed in terms of just a direct head on confrontation with a country like the United States or even England, that would fail. So they used a subversive strategy to kind of sow the seeds of their ideas into the culture, and particularly into the institutions of the culture, starting with education, and then kind of moving on from there.
The other thing that they make a point of saying here is that Marxism, it gains momentum, or it gains traction by working with people in a society that have a grievance, that are that are struggling, that are angry, that have been treated wrongly. So for example, in Russia, that would have been the peasants, the workers in that society were treated very aggressively. And so it wants to create, it wants to come alongside those people and say, we understand your plight. It's been caused by these—in this case—rich capitalists. It wants to foment division and a divide and use that divide to weaken the country, and then to bring in the solution, this kind of Marxist utopian solution. And in the United States, that didn't work very well, the workers in this country, because people were able to kind of move out of their class structure because of our freedom. And, you know, make progress, that message never really took hold.
So they focused on another divide, and it was very strategic of them. That was the racial divide. And they said, if we can sow this message into the black community, and help them to understand, you know, that they have been an oppressed minority. And there's obviously real truth to this in the United States, with slavery and Jim Crow. But if we can use that divide, and use the black community in the United States, they can be kind of the vanguard, the tip of the spear in pushing Marxism into the United States. I think that they make a really compelling case that that has happened, and that we're well down the road in terms of that strategy playing itself out. Guys, I just wanted to set the table here a little bit with some of what the what the video was saying in terms of the ideas of Marx and how they've been infiltrated into the United States, not exclusively through the black community by any means. But that was one social divide that they definitely leveraged. Luke, and John, what are your thoughts or reactions?
Yeah, you've expressed that and laid that out very, very clearly. And what we can also clearly see is what you what you just alluded to, this did not originate in the black community, this was part of a deceptive plan by the Marxist to do this in order to foment the kind of oppression that would allow their strategies to somehow take root. And of course, we look back even deeper at the origin of all of this, their motivations, and their tactics, it's all driven by Satan's desire to sift and we're reminded in Ephesians 6:12, that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Why is it important to say that? It's important both because we need to really understand the kinds of origins and the motivations that drive towards these kinds of end games. But also, it really helps us to understand how we ought to behave with people and behave even against people that we disagree with. We disagree vehemently with these kinds of ideas, but ultimately, they are people being used by Satan. So in a sense, it's not their fault. So how we how we act with people, how we try to interface with people, how we try to counter people, is greatly helped when we understand the origins of all of this, and especially the deception that is was being foisted upon the black community, many of whom, if not, most of whom did not realize that they were being used as pawns in this much greater game, which continues to today and the BLM Movement and things that we might talk about a bit later, but that motivation and that source ideology, it comes from nowhere else than Satan's deceptions. And how we respond to it can really really be helpful in knowing how to to try to drive things forward in a more biblically oriented manner.
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Ya know, that's such an important thing to highlight John, and the Bible speaks directly to this, especially Jesus when He says, we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. And I'm a firm believer that all of these lies, these false ideas, you know, they are sourced in the liar, the great liar himself, Satan. And our battle is really with him. This is a spiritual battle. This is spiritual warfare. And it's tragic when people believe these lies and spread these lies. But our fight isn't ultimately against them at all. In fact, we're called to love these people. And really hope that they can be set free from these deceptions and these false ideas that they believed and now they're championing and promoting.
So I think, yeah, I just want to touch too on the other point that you just made there, John, that these ideas, these Marxist ideas are not indigenous in the black community in the United States. And the film did a great job of kind of showing that. These are ideas that are imported from outside from Europe. And then they come into the United States, through kind of European intellectuals that are atheists, into Columbia University, University of California system in the 1950s. And behind them, it mentions a couple of key people that were very influential, one was Saul Alinsky. The author of the book, "Rules for Radicals," he was operating in the 1950s and 60s, and he was a Marxist and an atheist and a community organizer and an agitator. And he was very influential in shaping 1960s radical movements, including the Black Panther movement. He was very influential, for example, with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, some of our current de political figures. And yeah, so he's obviously a white guy.
And then the I thought the other thing that was interesting, and I didn't know a lot about this, but behind the current Black Lives Matter movement and the three founders was another white atheistic guy who's a communist Marxist guy named Eric Mann. Did I get his name, right? Mann, yeah. And he literally is spending his time training young, particularly women, to become Marxist agitators and community organizers. So the point that the film made was that, you know, black lives matter. And I really sensed this, when I first became aware of Black Lives Matter. It's not about essentially helping the black community deal with problems that are in the community. It's about using them, as pawns in this bigger game, that behind it are often white people, you know. So I think that's a really, really, really important point and one that I think I have a lot more learning to do myself on, frankly.
So one of the things too, that I thought was terrific about the film, guys, was and John, you alluded to this was it, because these ideas weren't indigenous, so to speak, in the African American community and went back and looked at the community before these ideas began to kind of come in and shape the community going back to the African American community, in the days following slavery, moving up into the early part of the 1900s. And it shows a picture of the black community that I think is really been intentionally—there's been an intentional effort to erase from history and our memory. John, you alluded to this, but it shows a community that was, as John you said, heavily influenced by the church, by Christianity. It was heavily shaped by Judeo-Christian values. You know, if you look at huge influencers in the community, people like Booker T Washington, they were largely operating out of a Judeo Christian worldview. And, you know, it's not to say that everything was great or perfect at all. But there was a lot of success and even prosperity in the community, as you were saying, John, earlier. Out of wedlock divorce rates were were no different in the African American community than they were in any other community if you go back to these times. The number of entrepreneurs wealth that was being created, and things like that was comparable to any other group in the United States at that time. And so they're trying to point the picture back to—this is kind of who we are as a community, not so much these new ideas, these foreign ideas that started coming in, in the 1950s, you guys want to comment on on any of that?
Only to echo it, absolutely. The stability of purpose, the stability of hope, that was present in these closing decades of the 1800s, after slavery, gave the encouragement, gave the community—we talked about needing community to really support things, it's absolutely true—but gave the kind of community where this type of flourishing could occur. You know, the divorce rates in that community are so so much less than they are now, I mean, even in the 1950s, and 60s, that's true, it's really been in the last 40 or 50 years, where that's been a problem. And then just very quickly, fast forwarding to now and then going back, we hear clearly now from social scientists that if there's a two parent family in the home, and both parents graduate from high school, and wait to have a child until after marriage, the chances of being below the poverty rate, if you do all of those things right are quite low. And so it's the kinds of things that have happened, especially in our urban areas, where education is not completed, where it's a single parent home, who has to work and just do all of the things it's so difficult to do that causes the chances of the kind of poverty incidence rates that we see today.
Anyway, going back to those times, the church and the community made such an incredible positive influence on how things developed back in those days. And not even the Christian church, I mean, even the example of the Rosenberg schools, which we can talk about some time, 5000 schools started by the Rosenberg family of Sears fame, funded those schools all over the Mid Atlantic and southeast and all, and the academic achievement rates of those schools were quite impressive. They were not too far different from schools as a whole in those days, and even up into the 1950s. I know, at least in the DC area where I live, the African American high school performance rates were very similar to what you'd see overall, maybe even higher in some cases, and you'd see overall in the suburbs and such. So the common denominator that attacks all this is the kind of anger and is the kind of oppression and is the kind of splitting up of the nuclear family, deemphasizing—not deemphasizing—attacking religion, and trying to replace it with other things. Those are the things that ultimately have made an incredible detrimental effect on the social statistics that we see today.
I just want to just dwell for a second on the African American community—this would be in the days following the Civil War, but during Jim Crow, so there was still real segregation, there was still real tension and racism. So things were not you know, there were real problems that needed to be addressed, and thankfully were addressed largely through civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But there was a real blossoming of the black community, there was some incredible things that were happening. And I think we quickly overlook just the power of what was going on in that community in those days, even when Jim Crow was in place. You had people like Jesse Owens, the incredible athlete. You had, one of my greatest heroes, frankly, is George Washington Carver, I mentioned Booker T. Washington, but George Washington Carver, his understanding of a biblical worldview and his living that out, and the way that he served his community, and the prosperity that that came from that the way that he applied biblical truth, broadly, you know, to science and art in all these areas of life, I mean, he is, for me, a great hero and model of everything that we're trying to teach in the DNA. And he is a product of the black community in the United States post Civil War, so there was something really powerful. And frankly, I'm fascinated by that, guys, I am just so fascinated by how the black community overcame just this difficult oppression of slavery, and became this powerful example of the biblical truth being lived out, you know, and just blossoming in so many unique and creative ways. So it's something I'm just kind of endlessly fascinated by.
Just wonderful examples of just pure excellence, and incredibly driven principles that lead to this pure excellence. And Elijah McCoy is a great example of that. And we all know the saying, "the real McCoy." And that came from the story of Elijah McCoy, who devised a new way to lubricate the undercarriages of trains back in that day, without a lot of education. And he went on to have a degree in mechanical engineering, or at least the equivalents thereof. But then when others came in and tried to say, well, we'll do it instead, the train owners would all say no, I want the real McCoy. That's where that saying "the real McCoy" came from, and he was just an incredible example of an industrious and just, principled man to be able to come up with an invention like that. This was very soon at the end of slavery, and very much a self made man and self educated man. So there's many, many, many other examples.
So many examples of that. There was incredible entrepreneurs and wealth. And you could think as well about just the arts and jazz and just this incredible blossoming that happened in this community. It was like nothing else anywhere in the world. And you know, if you're an African American, I think there's a lot of pride, you know, there should be in terms of going back and seeing how these people face their oppression, and came out of it through hard work and just reliance upon God. Guys, did you see that film came out a few years ago called Hidden Figures? About the women?
Early space program.
It's a little flavor of what we're talking about right now. If you remember that film, I encourage everyone to watch. That's a great film, but it's...
Katherine Johnson. I think she died just in the last year or at age 100. I mean, an amazing, amazing.
She was a genius, a mathematical genius that essentially made the space program function in these days, kind of just as computers were coming in. And she was a product to the African American community. And it shows her family, it shows how deeply they were rooted in the church and these Judeo Christian values and the value of education and it's a terrific picture into kind of what we're talking about right now. So I encourage people to watch that film, Luke, you're gonna say something?
Well, yeah, as I'm just thinking about this listening to you guys. I think a real reason that Marxism didn't stick in the US right away, is it's a worldview, right?
So where do you derive meaning and purpose in a Marxist worldview? A lot of it comes through materialistic ends, so money and equity, and things like that. Whereas in a biblical worldview, it's being a follower of God, a child of God. Work hard. Freedom, freedom of speech. A family, a strong family. These kinds of things are what gives us purpose and meaning. And you see that in the Church throughout history. What would you rather have a lot of money or a strong family? What would you rather have freedom or perfect equity in black America? In the Jim Crow days, that was an extremely evil time, systemically evil time. And yet you saw these thriving families, where babies were actually born into the world and black America today, 50% of babies are aborted before they even make it here.
With the rise of the Industrial Revolution—nothing against progress, of course, we, we all see the benefits of that—but with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, came the effects on the family that the father wasn't always around. And that time kind of coincided when schools came outside the house. And that's when public schools began. And they were very clear, and did a great job in the documentary to say there was no real government education till the latter part of the 19th century. And so they knew that Marxism needed to control education from the earliest days up, otherwise, the family and the beliefs and all came from the family, they were controlled by the family, controlled by the church. So the Marxist worldview has to control education to promote the kind of secularism that it saw and to have that happen coincident with the beginning of the industrial revolution made it a bit easier for it to do it. And so that's what led to the ideological subversion that Marxism is, you know, it's essentially a brainwashing to change culture that they covered so well in the documentary.
Yeah. And that was actually my probably biggest takeaway, overall takeaway from the film was just this importance on education, and especially on understanding history, we need to understand these things. I think it's really interesting in the Old Testament times, the only people group—up until I believe it was Greece—that ever recorded history was a Jewish nation. You don't see that in Babylon, you don't see that so much in Persia, or those other ancient civilizations. There wasn't this emphasis on history. And God said, you know, write these things down and tell them to your children and your children's children, not just the good things, but also the bad things so that you learn from them, and you can move on. Today, our education system completely skips over something incredibly important pieces of history and emphasizes other parts. We know about Jim Crow, we know about slavery, we should know about those. But do we know about the 6 million Ukrainians that died in the 1920s because of communism? No, probably not. I don't know many people that know very much about that. Do we know the 100 million people that died because of communism in the 21st century? No, that kind of gets washed right over? Do we know about these? Do we know about Booker T Washington and George Washington Carver? Not so much. It's so important to know this stuff. And it's recent, its recent history. And yet a lot of people just are surprised when you tell them things about them.
Yeah. So, you know, I remember when Black Lives Matter first came on the scene, guys. Let's talk about this subversion, because the thing that I noticed right away was, if it purports and—I was wondering, does this is this an organization that actually cares for helping the black community deal with the real issues and the brokenness of the black community? I didn't know. But I was kind of watching it and trying to understand it. But it kind of quickly dawned on me that no, they don't seem to be because they're not talking about the... again, going back to the earlier times during Jim Crow, the strong families and as you were saying, John, the importance of education. There was a high value on education in the African American community that was lost. The education, the value of education, diminished pretty strongly. And now you've got a situation where African American schools where so many people are studying are some of the worst schools in the country, and the family is broken down. So you've got to really deal with those issues if you want to see positive change.
But, you know, no, Black Lives Matter wasn't talking about those things at all. Well, then what were they talking about? They were talking about vilifying white people. They had to kind of sell this lie, really, that the problems and the anger and the bitterness that exists in the African American community are caused by white people. And so they had to foment kind of racial division. And so that's why for example, they would ignore black on black crime, which is a huge problem that shouldn't be ignored. But they wouldn't pay any attention to that. But if it was a white on black situation like the Floyd situation that had to be focused on exclusively, and this narrative had to be driven in that the problems that you are struggling with, the anger that you have, it's all because of white people. And it goes all the way back to slavery, to Jim Crow. And you are still under the thumb, you are still victimized by the systems and structures that are oppressing you. So its intention is to create, it's to further—and this is, I think the documentary brought this out, clearly, it's to further racial division, actually. It wants to do that. It wants to see people at each other's throats.
Because a divided country is a weaker country. Lincoln said this is very clearly right, that house divided against itself cannot stand. And Marxists understand that. So they want to foment division, to weaken the society in order for it to fall so that they can come in and begin to take over. They want those pieces of the society that bring it strength, like the family and education, they want to weaken those. They don't want those things to be in place. And so they deliberately attack those things in here. You saw the same thing with Black Lives Matter, right? You saw it right there in their mission statement, we want to undermine the family. We you know, I think they called it the Western prescribed nuclear family or something like that, you know, we need to undermine that. Well, that's just pure Marxism right there. You know, we got to undermine the family, we've got to take over education so that we can put forward our narrative of oppression. And that's why Luke, this get back to your your point on history that we don't want you to know that history of people like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. That's not helpful to our purposes. We want there to be a direct connection between slavery and today. I thought Voti Baucom made it just a very powerful point in this movie when he said, the black Americans United States today are the safest, most prosperous, freest black people in the world. And that you have to essentially help them to believe that they're not, that they're are some of the most oppressed.
Yeah, he said they have to be fed a lie in order to not believe that and so very clearly the strategic context of what Marxism is trying to do, it recognizes that it cannot defeat America militarily, or even through normal economic competition, it has to conquer from within. As we've always known, this idea of whether it be empires or anyone, we say they first implode from within before they are defeated from the outside. So this idea that America needed to be conquered from within through the education system, through the breakdown of the family, all of this through fomenting hate, through fomenting division, all of this weakens the infrastructure of the country and ultimately, its economic ability to defend itself. And we are seeing the effects of that today, no doubt.
Big time, John. And I think that's let's turn there because I do think this strategy has been—I mean, Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci was mentioned in the film more than once, and he was the one that said—this is the Italian Marxist back in the early 1800s—we'll never defeat the west through guns and war, like we can't just have a face on head on confrontation, that will not work. Rather, we've got to defeat them through infiltration, slow, steady infiltration of the culture over generations. That was the strategy. And they've been running that strategy successfully, effectively. And I think we just have to step back and say, we can see the fruits of it. Today there really has been a capture on the part of this ideology of our school systems, both K-12 and the universities. And not only schools now, but the big business, entertainment, even large portions of our government. So we're kind of late. I mean, this is the bad news. I guess we're kind of late into the day into seeing the fruits of the success of this infiltration strategy, guys. I think the question then becomes, so what do we do? How do we respond to all this? You know, and that's a question I've been asking myself, is it too late even? I think I've got some thoughts on that. And I'd love to share. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, too, guys.
I think the first thing we do is step back and pray. And we realize that it's only by the grace of God, that that we are here at all. And it's only by the grace of God that this kind of thinking can be thwarted. Again, as we said earlier, this thinking originates with Satan, and it's his way to attack. So we very much have to start with prayer, start with hope. Start with the church being the church in society, first in its families and in its neighborhoods, and in its institutions. And we have to both very clearly counter these lies and deceit, with the truths that come from Scripture and the truths that come from the principles of individual freedom and the truths that come from the ability for people to work hard and to be responsible, all of the things that are criticized as being white supremacist ideas now, and they are trying to be supplanted by this idea that no, the government's your answer to everything, you'd just be given everything. So we have to go back to those fundamental principles, that that is not the way forward. And even if you wanted to say that could result in some kind of equality, it would be a forced equality of very low means. I love the saying that says, perhaps you call it a problem, the problem of capitalism is the unequal sharing of benefits. The problem with socialism is the equal sharing of misery. So there might be equality, but it's going to be a quality at a level that no one would be satisfied with. And I'm primarily talking about that economically, but in other ways, as well.
I think, John, that the end goal here that they're aiming for is the way I would put it is, it's not this kind of perfect, utopian vision of equality, so much as it is, they really want to supplant God with kind of human institutions, think in terms of the Tower of Babel. They want a powerful state, that essentially—power and control a powerful state that supplants God, as the source of happiness, or whatever it is, and benefits. Instead of, you know, my God shall supply all your needs, according to his riches and glory, it would be the state supplies all your needs, according to its riches and glory, or whatever it is, it's something like that. And that even can sound good. But Orwell was correct in in his book, "Animal Farm" in terms of, you know, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. And so you've got the pigs, right, the pigs are the ones that are going to end up, as you know, you always see in Marxist systems around the world, they're going to end up being incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful. And it's going to be a system that's going to be incredibly oppressive. And deadly, frankly, so I mean, we know where this goes. But when you get rid of God, I feel like in some ways, this is the only hope that you have, somehow this thing has to work. This kind of system has to work. Go ahead, Luke, you were gonna say something there.
Yeah, you were you were saying what do we do when we realize that this has been going on for a long time.
And it's made incredible progress. I mean, it has discipled the nation in some ways.
Oh, yeah, definitely. In this is generations now of people being discipled. So it's in there, when I look around at my peers, and you know, the difference in education that we received, it makes it very hard to have a disagreement argument or argument with them because I say some maybe historical fact. And then they'll say one right back that's the complete opposite. And we both think we're standing on facts. That is so confusing. Because we just read from different textbooks. But to your point, that you can't live in a world that doesn't believe in God. It doesn't work because God is truth, falsehood will always crumble in itself in a way. So it's never too late. I love the quote by John Waters, it says, a lie is an attempt to suppress the truth, a lie occurs therefore, because truth exists. Hence, a sense of falsehood should always alert us to the suppression of something real. Lies will just crumble on their own because they're not based in reality. And you definitely see this in Marxism. Their end goal can never be achieved. And they're starting place of putting people in the groups does not work either. Because we don't fall that evenly into groups, it's extremely dangerous when you do that. There's always going to be outliers, just because of the way God made each of us as unique individuals.
Yeah, Luke, I agree with that, these lies ultimately are going to collapse. Truth Wins. God wins. God's Kingdom is eventually going to prevail, we know that. The thing I worry about is that there can be times where lies reap a whole bunch of destruction, it can be for generations? And is there a way that we can prevent that from happening here now? Eventually, you're right, the lies are going to be exposed, and they're going to collapse. Solzhenitsyn
the great Russian dissident was famous for saying, you know, if a lie comes, if it comes into the culture, it's not going to come through me, right? It's kind of our own personal resistance to that. I'm never going to be a party to furthering a lie. I'm going to speak the truth. I think of the lie that African Americans, for example, are deeply oppressed through something called white supremacy, and whiteness, which really whiteness, if you look at what they mean by that, and often is just Judeo Christian values. It has nothing to do with white people. But no, I'm not going to give any oxygen to that lie. We can't let these lies that are being sown pass through us. We have to have kind of a personal resistance to that.
A couple of things, I think, guys that give me some hope. Let me just maybe we can turn to some kind of what do we do about this? And is there hope? I do think that the capture of our institutions, educational government media, and you know, that's largely happened. That's the sobering part of this is that we've, we've really seen Marxist ideas, this kind of deeply socialist set of ideas, atheistic ideas, capture a lot of our institutions. And we see the bitter fruit of that in terms of just societal breakdown. And I do think, though, that the leaders of the institutions are not by any stretch, the majority of the American people or people in the West, even. So I feel like that they may have a lot of money, and they have a lot of power, but they don't have a lot of people support. I could be wrong on that. But that's my sense.
And I think for those of us who are Christians, you know, we have certain specific things, John, you are getting at this that we need to do. Number one, as I said, is let's just make some personal convictions not to be—I think we have to understand, there's a lot of learning and I've had to go back and learn what's going on. What is this? What are these ideas and what's been the strategy that they've been playing, the game they'd been running in the West for, now it's been 150 years? So we have to understand that and what it looks like today. It's still going on, it's still going on through people like Eric Mann and Black Lives Matter and organizations like that. So what we have to understand it. We have to understand what are the lies that they're spreading? What are they trying to do? They're trying to divide. Okay, if they're trying to divide us and get us to hate each other, well, that's something that we can respond to by saying, no, we won't. We will not allow that to happen. We're not going to be vilifying any other group of people. We're going to treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of skin color, and this is why I love Monique Duson's wonderful ministry that is now a partner of the DNA. The Center for Biblical Unity. That's exactly the right message that we need to have at this time. A message of unity, because that counters this intentional strategy of divisiveness.
I think another thing is the schools, Luke, you mentioned this, but the schools have been captured. That's not to say every school is evil, or every teacher is evil. No, I know a lot of great Christian teachers working in public schools, but the system itself has been deeply corrupted at this point. And what's being taught is this ideology. It's been pushed heavily now through public education. So what do we do about that? Well, we have to answer that question in a couple of ways. What do we do in terms of our own families and our own children? Okay, let's not just simply allow our children to be indoctrinated. No, let's teach them truth. Okay, so let's take the reins in terms of the education of our own children. But there is a movement right now, I'm really encouraged by this movement of parents in the United States who've had enough and they're saying, we're done. We need to get back. We need to get control again, of the schools and the curriculum. Because they're not teaching what we believe. They're teaching lies, whether it's lies in terms of sexuality, transgenderism, or its lies in terms of critical race theory, that's not what we want taught to our children. And so there's a true movement, what can we do, then the question is to support that movement. How do we lend support? I think that's a really important movement. What other things guys, I've got some other thoughts, but what are the things specifically can people be doing in response?
Scott, the real irony here is that what you just described is the power of the people. Yes. And we learned that during COVID, we saw how communities have have arisen, and we saw how communities have dealt with and said, look, what what's being taught in schools is being hidden from us, we're not going to take this anymore, we're going to take back our schools. We as parents are ultimately responsible for our kids education, the state is not. And we know right here in Virginia, that was a big debate and ultimately very much affected the outcome of the government elections. So the very ideology that claimed to be the opiate of the people, to making people powerful and all, is the opposite of what reality is. So back to your comment, and the great quote that Luke had, these are lies. These are absolutely lies, that the truth of power to the people comes from being created in the image of God, being free to speak, being free and being held responsible, believing in duty, believing in the betterment of the family, believing in the betterment the community, the neighborhood, etc. So these are these are great examples that we're starting to see through this.
What more can we do? More of the same. And again, I'll go back to prayer, and I'll, I'll pray for a revival in our country, there's definitely a role of the church in all of this. But there's also very much of a role in communities and a role in state legislatures. We have to continue to be more bottom up instead of top down. In our, in our nation, I'm not just talking about politics here, but just in how we take care of one another. Example of that is the church in the welfare state. The tragedy is that the church relinquished its duties to take care of the impoverished, and struggling people and turned that over in the Great Society times, the 1960s, and such to the state. So that's just another another example of how we help to take care of things. And that's true, especially in urban areas now in the United States. So the role of the local church is super important in all this, to be a light in its community and salt in its community.
Yeah, John, and that takes us back to the black community. In the days that we were talking about the days of Jim Crow, where the church was really strong, and it was the center of the community and great strength came out of that. And what you know, the Marxist kind of infiltration wants to do, of course, is weaken the church and pull apart those pieces of the fabric of society. And I think that's just another thing that we need to do to push back once we're aware of that strategy. We need to be committed to the community of the local church or our own local churches. And those communities are very strong, they need to become very strong and important for us in these days. Church family needs to be strengthened. Churches need to be strengthened.
And churches need to be—I think there's been way too much passivity because of the sacred/secular divide. I think there's this mindset on the part of the church that none of this really matters, right? It's all just culture warring stuff, and it doesn't really matter. We need to get people saved, get them to heaven, kind of job done. Whatever happens in the society doesn't matter. To those kind of people. I want to, I just want to challenge that in kind of the most vehement way because, and I want to take us back to Germany in the 1930s. You saw in that time another set of ideas—another demonic set of ideas, Satan was behind it—coming in forcefully into a very Christian civilization in Germany, Nazism. And the church was there, it was present at that time. And I think it faced the same temptations that we face today. It's none of our business, we just need to focus on personal holiness, evangelism and all of this stuff with the government and politics, let's just ignore that. It's not important. And when the church does that, guess who, you know, carries the day in terms of the society. In this case, it was Nazism. And I think we're at a similar—it's not certainly full grown at this point. But there's a similar dynamic happening right now, there's horrible ideas, they're deadly, they'll destroy us. These ideas will destroy us if they're not checked. And I think we are kind of coming to a head and the church has a role to play, and we can't just put our heads down, and kind of pretend that this isn't happening. And just ignore it. Now, we've got to be active in not just pushing back against the bad ideas, as we often say, but upholding the truth and living that out ourselves. But being very educated as much as we can about what's going on, what are these ideas, who's behind them, what strategies that we're using? And let's be as strong as we can in our faith. Right now. Guys, final thoughts from you, as we as we wrap up a really great discussion today.
Just the importance of understanding, you know, the authority structures around us and who has God put in authority over the poor in our societies and our communities? Is that the government, or is that the church and the individual in the family? Who should be the first one there to educate our kids? The government, or the family? In the absence of God, some authority structure needs to take his place. And in the toxic new religion, we see that being the government, a lot of times, this hyper dependence on the government to fulfill all of our needs. That is not going to work out for us well. So understanding that and putting them back in their place is important. And something each of us can can easily do by looking into the Bible and seeing the ways that God has mapped out the role of each of these structures in societies, the way that they should work well in harmony together.
John, final thoughts?
Just an echo to what we've concluded here and back to the very beginning, that the origin of our faith, and the origin of the truth that comes from the person in life of Jesus Christ is the origin of right thinking, right values, right priorities, and right behaviors in individual lives, collectively in the church. And hopefully, in influencing society, and even having priorities in society that are resonant with and consistent with the truth of Scripture. That's not harkening and calling for a religious state, but it is saying that we know that what is good and what is right comes from the Lord and comes from Scripture and makes that fruit and that difference in society and all praise to Him. So that's where we understand the source and the expression and what we want to promote, and turn right back around and give all glory to God for when it's expressed and when it takes root in society.
Yeah, thanks, John. Those are great thoughts. And Luke you too, just if I could express one final thought on this, I think I'll give credit to the people who've been working over many generations now to push these ideas into the culture and to shape the culture, I will give them credit for having a vision to shape the society according to certain set of values and principles, a certain end goal that they're very committed to, and a strategy that I think in many ways is right. I mean, it's focused on family and education and institutions of society. And if anything, I think the church needs to kind of—this should be our strategy actually. We should have that same passion to see, not lies that are destructive, but biblical truth sewn into the culture, for the good of our neighbors and for the blessing of our nations. So we should have that same kind of zeal, strategic mindset, and commitment to kind of working the long game, and focusing on these key institutions of family and of education. And so I'll give them credit. I think we can learn something from what they've done.
It's just that what we've got to do is, we don't do it to honor and glorify man or government, we do it to honor and glorify God. And we don't use lies, we speak truth. So we've got a whole different agenda, but the strategy, we need to kind of come back and learn something from what they've done, because there's no reason that what they've done couldn't be done on the part of Bible believing Christians to shape culture. Itit has been done, needs to be done. So that's why we're part of the Disciple Nations Alliance, right guys? John, Luke, great to be with you today. And we just want to encourage everyone go out and you can just Google "Uncle Tom II" or you can go to Salem media. You pay to watch this film, there's a small fee, but it's worth it. I encourage everyone to go watch it, I think you'll learn a lot. It's a really important piece and just appreciate those who took the time to make it. They did a really artistic job with it, it's really well done. So encourage you to watch it. I'd love to hear your feedback on it as well. So feel free to send us your thoughts as you watch and respond to that. Thanks for listening again to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences.
Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the Disciple Nations Alliance. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, or on our website, which is disciplenations.org. As always, if you'd like to take a deeper dive into today's topic, feel free to check out the episode landing page which is linked down in the description below. On that page, you can find the resources and tools that can help you learn more about today's discussion on "Uncle Tom II." Thanks again for listening.
